The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park

10/11/2026

The final installment of our 5-part series with Exploratory Research Resident Sage Elwell.

To wrap up his spring research residency at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park, Sage Elwell, Professor of Religion and Art at Texas Christian University, offers a personal reflection on human vulnerability, bodily experience, and care.

“There is nothing more humbling than having to be taken care of. And there’s also nothing more human than that. And that vulnerability is beautiful both when it’s given and when it’s received.”

In this final episode, Sage reflects on how shared human fragility informs his artwork, encouraging a sense of humility and acknowledging the beauty found in caregiving and vulnerability.

Watch Episode 5 to complete Sage’s residency series!

About the Exploratory Research Residency: Our residency program invites emerging and professional artists, scholars, curators, and educators to engage with the sculptures, writings, and archives of Jeffrey Rubinoff. Designed to foster independent inquiry, the residency supports new directions in art, research, and public dialogue inspired by the park.

Photos Courtesy of Don Peterson

10/06/2026

What can sculpture learn from music?

In music, counterpoint happens when two or more independent melodies are played together, each with its own character, while contributing to a larger whole. Jeffrey Rubinoff saw a similar possibility in sculpture where forms could exist in relationship to one another without having to simply represent something from the visible world.

Rubinoff was fascinated by how music had broken free from the limitations of a single voice centuries before painting and sculpture. He saw modern art’s move toward abstraction as a similar liberation, opening new possibilities for how forms could interact.

Series 5 explores this counterpoint of forms where sculpture, like music, can create meaning through relationships rather than representation.

Visit the JRSP website to explore more of Series 5: rubinoffsculpturepark.org/series-5/

10/02/2026

While the summer season has come to a close, the work of caring for the Park continues.

With fewer visitors on the grounds, the team turns its attention to seasonal maintenance, caring for the landscape and tending to the sculptures that make the Park their home.

From the meadows and pathways to the steel surfaces of Rubinoff’s sculptures, maintaining the Park is an ongoing part of preserving this unique place for future visitors.

Follow along for upcoming announcements!

Photo: Don Peterson

09/30/2026

Episode 4 of our 5-part series with Exploratory Research Resident Sage Elwell!

In this fourth episode, Prof. Sage Elwell, reflects on impermanence, performance art, and the dialogue formed between two artists’ work.

“With respect to ultimate concern and matters of universal importance, at the end of the day, I think that relationship is what matters... What we leave behind will be a trace of that relationship, and that’s sort of what we’re doing here.”

Sage discusses how documenting his temporary sculptures at the park preserves the memory of this artistic encounter, leaving behind a lasting trace of his dialogue with Rubinoff’s environment.

Watch Episode 4 now, and stay tuned for the 5th and final episode!

About the Exploratory Research Residency: Our residency program invites emerging and professional artists, scholars, curators, and educators to engage with the sculptures, writings, and archives of Jeffrey Rubinoff. Designed to foster independent inquiry, the residency supports new directions in art, research, and public dialogue inspired by the park.

Photos Courtesy of Don Peterson

09/27/2026

In Series 6, Jeffrey Rubinoff looked beyond conventional art history, drawing inspiration from Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” and the extraordinary experimentation with form found in the natural world.

He was particularly interested in the Cambrian Explosion, when an extraordinary diversity of animal forms emerged over a relatively short period of geological time. This offered a new way of thinking about artistic invention: the impulse to experiment with form is part of the evolutionary history of life itself.

He described this as an “exchange of metaphors” with the Burgess Shale, extending the history of art backwards by hundreds of millions of years. For Rubinoff, art was ultimately a way of engaging with our place within this vast history: “Art is the map of the human soul.”

Series 6 invites us to consider art as part of a much older story of creativity, transformation, and the invention of form.

Explore Series 6 at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park website: rubinoffsculpturepark.org/series-6/

Pictured: Series 6, Cassiopeia 5, 1991, 242 Cor-ten and Series 6, Cassiopeia 6, 1990, 242 Cor-ten

09/23/2026

The summer season may be over, but the creative life of the Park continues.

The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park was created as a place to experience Jeffrey Rubinoff’s life’s work, as well as a place where art can contribute to the discovery and development of ideas.

Rubinoff described the purpose of his work as helping to “revive the interdisciplinary creative impetus of early modernism” and to understand art as a serious and credible source of insight in the evolution of ideas.

Today, that vision continues to inform the Park’s work, including its support for artists, scholars, and new creative inquiry.

Keep an eye out for upcoming residency opportunities and programs as the Park’s next season begins to take shape.

The fall may be quieter, but there is more to come.

09/13/2026

Episode 3 of our 5-part series with Research Resident Sage Elwell:

As part of his research residency at the Sculpture Park this past spring, Sage Elwell, Professor of Religion and Art at Texas Christian University, spent his time on Hornby Island exploring how both art and religion function as essential tools for human meaning-making.

“Art speaks to the heart, and the things of the heart are the things that stick with us... Art is the form of feeling, and when it comes to feeling, when it comes to emotion, that’s also the language of religion.”

In this third episode, Sage reflects on how artistic expression and spiritual traditions transcend pure logic to reconnect us with something larger than ourselves, focusing on the idea of religion as a process of “rebinding” to the transcendent.

Watch Episode 3 now to hear Sage’s reflections from the park.

About the Exploratory Research Residency: Our residency program invites emerging and professional artists, scholars, curators, and educators to engage with the sculptures, writings, and archives of Jeffrey Rubinoff. Designed to foster independent inquiry, the residency supports new directions in art, research, and public dialogue inspired by the park.

Photos courtesy of Don Peterson

09/10/2026

Aaron Richmond was selected from over 50 applicants as the 2026 University of Victoria - Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park Artist-Scholar in Residency. Aaron's residency focused on the park’s sculptural environment as a living archive, while also treating it as a prompt for the continued exploration of material practices, ideas, and gestures. While in residence, Richmond worked on developing a body of work that moves, like a relay, from landscape-architectural drawings to the creation of lightweight temporary sculptures.

With this work, Richmond hopes to provoke a broader set of questions: about art’s continued relevance as a space for experimentation; about its dynamic interplay between graphic, formal, textual and performative modes of attention; and about the kinds of fleeting scenography suited to this moment of social and environmental uncertainty.

Watch the video here 👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CycysqXh1DA

About the Residency
A professional artist or established scholar is chosen by the University of Victoria to spend up to five weeks at the sculpture park producing a work in line with their own practice. The Artist subsequently spends a week in Victoria do in readings, lectures, exhibits, performances of their work, and engaging the students and faculty.

Aaron Richmond was selected from over 50 applicants as the 2026 Uni...

09/04/2026

Episode 2 of our 5-part series with Research Resident Sage Elwell:

During his residency this past spring, Sage Elwell, Professor of Religion and Art at Texas Christian University, spent time reflecting on the deeper connections between art, religion, and human value.

In this second episode, Sage shares his perspective on how art and religion address our deepest longings for beauty, the sublime, and transcendence. He explores the difference between daily "instrumental" goals and the intrinsic experiences - like music, art, and human connection - that ultimately give life meaning.

Watch Episode 2 now to hear Sage's reflections from the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park.

About the Exploratory Research Residency: Our residency program invites emerging and professional artists, scholars, curators, and educators to engage with the sculptures, writings, and archives of Jeffrey Rubinoff. Designed to foster independent inquiry, the residency supports new directions in art, research, and public dialogue inspired by the park.

Photos courtesy of Don Peterson

09/03/2026

Inspiring the next generation of sculptors!

This past June, Timberline Secondary School unveiled "Crescent Moon Wolf" - its very first student-created sculpture, crafted by students Summer Knowles and Bella Lee through their school’s art metal program.

Under the mentorship of teacher Stephen Johnston, Knowles and Lee brought their vision to life using plasma cutting, CAD design, and welding to shape steel into form. This new work marks the start of a student-led sculpture garden at the school, extending Timberline’s long-standing relationship with the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park.

Supported through the Educator’s Award granted to Timberline teacher Steve Joyce, this initiative reflects Rubinoff’s commitment to Art as a Source of Knowledge and demonstrates the enduring impact of introducing young minds to hands-on, physical sculpture.

Congratulations to Summer, Bella, and the Timberline community on this beautiful milestone! 🎉